Garban Totan Securities has won approval from Japanese regulators to operate an electronic fixed income trading system for the national government bond market.
The company, a joint venture between Garban-Intercapital and Totan, is the only matched principal broker so far to receive approval. The company claims a 40% share of the brokered market of Japanese government bonds.
Bryan Massey, CEO of Garban Totan Securities, says: "All of Garban-Intercapital's current voice broked liquidity will be carried on ETC. A completely new extranet has been created in Tokyo and the system has so far been installed and tested in the trading rooms of 17 clients. Further clients will be added to the system during the next month."
The ETC system for the Japanese market uses the same underlying technology as that used in the US Treasury markets. In December 2000, electronic trading on ETC in US Treasuries exceeded $139 billion.